Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Mar 27, 2008
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
The Driving Test
This is a subject that I am sure everybody can relate to, no matter how long ago they actually sat their driving test. I remember it well, even though I sat and passed mine way back in 1974, which seems like a lifetime to me now. As I was still serving in the Navy at the time, it was not easy to fit in driving lessons during my leave periods, as I never really knew in advance just when I would be on leave, so booking driving lessons in advance was just not possible. So I used to drive my parents' Austin A70 which was a big car with a column gear change and took some handling, as it never had power-assisted steering. With my learner plates up, and one of the lodgers next to me (well, I say lodger, he was more like a second dad to me, as he had stayed with us for years). He was actually the bloke who got me involved in mountain climbing and hillwalking, as we was a really keen outdoor bloke, in fact he even got me into the local RAF mountain rescue team. Anyway, because my parents ran a business my dad never really had the time to take me out driving so Roy (I will call him that for the sake of the story) used to come out with me. He owned a small Mini at that time and I used to drive that as well, it was a vast difference to the large Austin, but I really enjoyed driving it, as it was so quick and nippy, and I could throw it around the old runway area where we used to go to be away from the main roads.
I had in fact been driving since I was twelve, when my dad used to allow me to sit on his knee and steer when we took the car to the same old stretch of runway. Then later on when my dad went self employed and started his ice cream van business and I was a lot taller and could reach the pedals, he used to let me drive the van between stops when we were on the near-by RAF camp. I can still remember sitting in the driving seat with my head turned fully round, impatiently waiting for the last customer to get off the step at the back of the van, so that I could drive the short distance to the next stop. Of course when it came to driving the van on the public road, over to the next section of married quarters, my dad would drive. He also visited a lot of rural farms on his round, and they had long private roads leading up to their houses, so I would be allowed to drive up those as well. I really enjoyed driving; in fact I still do despite the volume of traffic we see on our roads these days. I did manage to get a driving test date during one of my leave periods in 1972 and used my dad's Austin A70 to take it. The examiner looked like one of those officious types, with his row of pens in his jacket pocket, and stared at me over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses. Anyway, I felt really confident that day, and I thought I had done well, considering he picked the narrowest street possible to make me do the three-point turn; in fact after I had managed that without hitting any curbs, my confidence grew, so much that I just relaxed.
This was to be my undoing, for as we were approaching the test centre building on completion of the test, I stopped to allow a young mother with a child in a push chair, with heavy bags of shopping hanging from the handles, and two other toddlers at her side, stuck in the middle of the road. As soon as I stopped, I just knew it was a mistake, as the examiner started scribbling feverishly into the page on the clip board that he clung onto all through the test. When we got back he seemed to take great pleasure in telling me that I had failed for that very act of stopping and endangering the vehicle to a collision from the rear! I was younger then and had a temper which I am afraid to say I never kept in check that day, and gave him a mouth full of verbal abuse, and even threatened to re-arrange the glasses on his face, as I felt so aggrieved at being failed for such minor action, which I thought at the time was the correct thing to do, seeing as the woman was stranded half way across the road and in danger. Of course this did me no good at all; in fact it led to me from being banned from ever sitting my test from the test centre ever again! I never gave the matter much thought at the time, as I was heading back to my ship two days later, but then it dawned on me, where can I sit my test next time?
It was not until 1974 before I had the chance to book my test again, as I was given leave dates three months in advance. So I phoned up and asked my dad if he could arrange a couple of hours' tuition with a local driving instructor and a test date at the nearest test centre apart from the one I was banned from. This turned out to be a town called Keith, which is about 24 miles from my home town, and all they could manage was to put me down as a stand in, in the case of a sudden cancellation.
There was no point in booking any lessons, either, with that situation. So when I arrived home on leave some weeks later, I did the normal thing, which was to go out and have a drink and enjoy myself, so much so that I had the hangover from hell the following morning, which left me feeling rather ill.
Then around midday we received a call from the test centre in Keith, telling us that they had a cancellation for 16.30 that afternoon! This left me with very little time to arrange things, so I contacted the instructor I knew and asked if he could help me in any way. He told me that although his car was being serviced that day, he could come round and give me a couple of hours tuition while waiting, using my dad's car, then we could use his car for the actual test as it would be ready by then. This was the only plan we could manage at such short notice, so I got my lesson using my dad's car, and then we went to collect his one. When we got there it wasn't quite ready, so we had an agonising wait during which we kept pacing up and down while he was asking me questions from the Highway Code; at the same time we kept glancing at our watches. When the car was eventually ready, the instructor said that there was no time for me to drive it through to Keith as we would be cutting it fine as it was, and he would have to 'boot it' hard just to get us there on time, which he did, and he could really handle that Triumph Dolomite which he owned, as he threw it round all the tight bends and corners on route. So with hot tyres and a really hot engine we pulled up outside the test centre at exactly 16.30, there to meet us was the examiner, patiently waiting.
I knew I was in trouble straight away as he climbed into the passenger seat, as there I was trying to find the lever to adjust the driver seat to bring it forward, while at the same time scanning the steering and dash board to see where all the controls were, as I had never even sat in that seat before. "When you are ready" he said as he looked at his watch, and we set off. I was still trying to find my way around the car and set the rear view mirror. After a while he asked me to take the next turning on the left. Not knowing the town at all as I had never been there before, I looked for a break in the curb stones to tell me where the junction was. As soon as I had made the turn, I knew I had blown it, as we were now in a filling station forecourt! Well that was it for me, I thought I might as well just sit back and enjoy the rest of the test, giving that I was not feeling at my best anyway. So he asked me in a very calm and polite manner to turn left once we had left the filling station, and we continued with the rest of the test, which was frightening to say the least, as I never had a clue as to where we were going.
As we arrived back at the test centre I could see my instructor pacing up and down and smoking as he did so, I dared not look at him, as I felt sure within myself that I had let him down and wasted all his time and effort, which left me feeling rather guilty for doing so.
Much to my surprise the examiner told me that I had passed and handed me the green ticket as he opened the car door to leave. "By the way, the lever to slide the seat forward is on the right hand side" he said smiling as he turned to walk away. My instructor was really happy for me as well, and I felt on top of the world, and asked him if I could drive back, to which he said OK but not at the speed we came through at. That was my driving test on that day, a day that started off so bad, with me having a bad hangover as well. Since then I have sat and passed other tests, including the Advanced Driving Test which I passed in 1984 and the Taxi drivers test in 1987, then the Emergency Driving Test which I had to take for my job in the ambulance service. I still enjoy driving to this day, and say, thankfully that I have never had an accident (which I caused myself) in all the years up till now, I have been hit by other drivers on several occasions, but I don't think they had sat their tests in the same way as I did.
